The Heavenly Table

19

AFTER THEIR SECOND robbery, a bungled affair in Danville, Georgia, in which Cane’s pistol went off accidently as they fled out the bank door with six hundred dollars, and Cob fell off his horse as they galloped out of town, it was decided that, if they were going to survive, they needed to spend some time focused on marksmanship and staying in the saddle. That same night they broke into a hardware store in a nearby hamlet and stole three Springfield rifles and five Smith & Wesson Schofield pistols and several cases of ammunition, along with enough pork and beans and oyster crackers and chocolate bars to last them a week. They rode deep into the hills the next morning and set up camp in an isolated valley rimmed with limestone outcroppings and dotted with patches of lush green grass.

Over the next several days, they went through over a thousand rounds of ammunition and burned out the barrels on two of the pistols. If it hadn’t been for Cob’s idea of sticking chewed-up wads of licorice in their ears, prompted by memories of Pearl and his efforts to regain the Great Silence, the repetitive blasts would have probably destroyed their hearing, as well. Though Chimney turned out to be by far the best shot — able to knock the head off a crow with the Springfield at a hundred yards after only a couple of hours of practice — Cane, and occasionally even Cob, were soon blowing tin cans and ground squirrels into the air at a respectable fifty. Getting the hang of shooting and reloading on horseback at anything faster than a walk proved more daunting, and Cob nearly broke his neck several times before he was allowed to quit. Still, by the time they broke open the last box of bullets, Cane and Chimney felt confident that they could hold their own in a fight.

They were packing up, getting ready to ride out of the valley, when they heard the buzzing sound. “There it is,” Chimney said, pointing at what looked like a giant mosquito high up in the sky coming toward them. As it got closer, the airplane began to descend, and by the time it passed over them, it was close enough that they could make out two goggled men inside. They saw the one in the seat behind the cockpit lean out a little and look down at them. Cob raised his hand and waved. “I bet there’s one of them carnivals or county fairs goin’ on around here somewhere,” he said. “I wish we could go.”

At the other end of the valley, the plane turned and began to circle back. The pilot, Reese Montgomery, was a golden-haired playboy who had spent the last two years traveling around the country spending his tycoon father’s money like water and looking for adventure and unique items of interest. Three months ago, he had leased a private coach from the B&O for himself and his butler and cook, and another rail car to carry two of his latest acquisitions: a German-built Fokker two-seater biplane he found on the Brownsville black market, and the Eau Claire County Nut Cracker, a burly cage-fighter raised in the Wisconsin logging camps who had recently gained a certain notoriety for castrating several of his opponents with his teeth. Also traveling in the second car was Arnold Whistler, the playboy’s mechanic and go-to man in an emergency. A former maintenance supervisor at one of the Montgomery textile mills, he had been an employee of the family since before Reese’s birth. There had been a time when he thought, if he demonstrated enough diligence and loyalty, he might be made head manager at one of the bigger factories, but that time had passed, and his primary duties these days consisted of covering up felonies and filth and secretly wiring back reports to John Montgomery from time to time, informing him of his brat’s whereabouts and latest erratic behavior. Still a little wary of the Nut Cracker’s mood swings, he slept in the cockpit of the Fokker with a small five-shot Colt within easy reach; and every morning he reminded himself that if he could put up with their shit just a few more months he could retire to a little cottage he had purchased on a hill overlooking Camden, Maine, and never again have to negotiate a payment plan with a battered woman or end another telegram to Montgomery senior with “Your Faithful Servant.”

The train had just arrived in Atlanta when Reese heard about the three outlaws who had robbed the banks in Farleigh and Danville and were also accused of murdering some hick squire named Tardweller. Though the reward, a pitiful two hundred and fifty dollars, didn’t interest him in the slightest, the DEAD OR ALIVE notice at the bottom of the wanted poster was too good to resist. If nothing else, he told Whistler, hunting them down might be good sport. And besides, he was bored, bored shitless with life as well as with the woman who was this summer’s companion, a raven-haired English tart advertised by her bankrupt brother-in-law as the most titillating piece of romance this side of the Mississippi, but who had turned out to be just another brainless suction pump looking for a rich husband. Indeed, though her pedigree supposedly extended as far back as Charlemagne, her entire bag of tricks could have easily been replicated by half a dozen other mammals. Just that morning he had said so, comparing her to a baby calf, and then left her bawling like one on the marble floor. God, she was boring.

He had his train cars parked at the first siding outside Atlanta, then unloaded his plane and flew to Danville with the mechanic and several firearms. After talking to the local constable, he had several caches of fuel sent ahead to various towns within a hundred-mile radius, and set off looking for the bandits, described as three dipshit farm boys in dirty white shirts riding horses. Landing that evening in a small junction called Coon Crossing to top off his petrol tank and find some shelter for the night, he was picking at a supper of overdone quail in the local boardinghouse when he heard about a young berry picker who had told about an almost constant barrage of shooting in the hills to the northeast just that afternoon. At sunrise the next morning, after downing several cups of chicory coffee laced with brandy, he and Whistler flew off in that direction.

And lo and behold, there they were, right out in the middle of an open field. This was going to be almost as easy as the time he shot the muzzled lion in a cage over in New Jersey. As he turned the plane to make a second pass, Montgomery indicated to the mechanic with shouts and hand signals to hold his fire until he got as close as possible. The three men down below were still looking up, their mouths gaped open in curiosity. Whistler leaned out over the fuselage and fired several times as the plane got within a hundred yards of the ground. After passing them, Montgomery pulled back on the joy stick and the plane ascended sharply, then banked to the left and began still another swoop.

“Jesus Christ, let’s get out of here,” Cane yelled, as the next round of bullets pinged about them, one ricocheting off a rock and clipping a few strands off his horse’s matted tail.

“Ain’t no time for that,” Chimney said, jerking his Springfield from the scabbard on his saddle. “The sonofabitch is already comin’ back around.” They were ratcheting shells into the chambers of their guns when Montgomery swooped over again, sending the horses and Cob into a panic as several more bullets splatted in the dirt around them. As the plane began to make yet another circle, Chimney told Cane, “Just aim for the front.”

Montgomery, at that moment, was growing enraged with Whistler, who was struggling to reload. An entire magazine emptied and not a single hit. He decided that he was going to have to shoot the bastards himself. Though there was a machine gun mounted on the front of the plane, the synchronization was out of whack and Whistler had been at a loss as to how to fix it. If Reese engaged it, there was a good chance he’d shoot the wooden propeller off. He was bored, but not that bored. Berating the grease monkey with every curse word he could think of, he leaned heavy on the stick and pulled a Colt.22 out of his coveralls. To do any good with it, he was going to have to get close enough to count their goddamn teeth, assuming the ingrates even had any. He looked down and saw two of them raise rifles and point them at the plane, which only incensed him even more. In all the time he’d been alive, nobody had ever had the audacity to raise their voice to him, let alone threaten him with a gun. For Christ’s sake, he was a Montgomery; his father played bridge with the Rockefellers, his mother had served as Grand Madam of the Heirloom Ball!

The mechanic yelled a warning just as Montgomery heard the whap of the bullet, felt it rip through his neck and exit the other side below his ear. More surprised than hurt, at least for a brief second, he dropped the pistol to the floor of the cockpit and reached for his throat with both hands. Behind him, he heard Whistler fire off another round just before the plane shot upward and then leveled out for a few seconds, seeming to nearly come to a stop a thousand feet in the air. Hot blood gushed from the holes in his neck and poured over the front of his coveralls. Everything was happening too quickly. He tried to take a breath and choked. Another clot of blood gushed from his mouth, and he pitched forward as the plane began to nosedive, banging his face against the front panel. He heard the mechanic yell something, felt him pounding frantically on his back. He thought about how the girl he’d left in the club car would probably fuck the butler and the cook out of pure joy when she heard about his demise; and he felt a little regret roll over him just then, because, really, she hadn’t been so bad. It was he who had—

“Poor fellers,” Cob said, as they watched the plane smash into the ground a few hundred yards away, scooping out a short trench with its nose before bursting into a ball of flames. “I guess they wasn’t from no fair, was they?” Then they heard a scream, and Cane jumped on his horse and started to ride toward the wreck. “What the fuck are ye doing?” Chimney yelled, just before the plane exploded again, tossing bits of burning flesh and canvas into the air. The funnel of black smoke was visible for miles around, but it didn’t matter. They were long gone by the time the law got there.